Students usually get the best time of their lives while at the university or other upper education institutions. You have fun, if you wish, every time can be leisure time. And if bad luck befalls you like Sharifah, a student at Makerere University, your so-called friends can lead you into sin and all can be for nothing.
Sharifah like any other finalist was looking for her marks to celebrate with her friends who had excelled highly. They had spent their three years partying, moving to places and reading less but somehow always excelled. However, this time, two of her marks were not good. They called for a retake.
“After seeing my results and my friends’ I realized that I am the only one that wasn’t going to graduate because of retakes. I talked to my friends with whom I was moving with from place to place, ignoring classes and asked them on how I could get help, she narrates.
Sharifah was surprised to see all her friends had excelled and they told her that their issues were already sorted before the results were pinned on the notice board. “I was really disappointed with my friends for leaving me out in such a situation,” she said.
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Her friends told her they had to deal with each lecturer of the course units so as to be cleared and be ready to graduate.
“In my mind I thought it was a matter of paying money to sort things out. I even started planning on how to get the money until I realized that the situation was different and my friends meant that they had slept with lecturers for marks,” she explains.
Sharifah’s friends confirmed that they had slept with different lecturers for their marks. She was told to do the same.
At first, she felt like it was not an easy move but every time she listened to her mother asking God to make her daughter graduate, she got a little step closer to accepting.
“I was not ready to let my mother down. I was the only hope of excellence in academics so I had to do this,” she said. The first lecturer, (faculty and name withheld) told her to meet him at a hotel. She says that her experience with that particular lecturer was rough but she had to finish what she had started with two more lecturers.
“Things went on really fast with the two the two lecturers. I met one in the morning and the other one in the afternoon. I was so depressed and lost with the entire situation. However, I focused on the goal which was graduating with some good grades. I pulled myself together,” she said.
Time passed and Sharifah did not see any change in her results. She waited for her name in the graduates’ book but it wasn’t included.
I continued to be patient but that did not yield any good result. I asked my friends about how they did it to get the immediate results and all they could say was I wait for it to be worked on but they seemed like something wasn’t right.
“Two days to the graduation, mother was already around asking why my name was not in the graduation book,” he said.
The result led Sharifah to the lecturers who laughed it off and said the institution did not operate the way Sharifah was driving it.
“They laughed and said that’s not how things work in academics and that it was my fault if I didn’t graduate. Their role as lecturers was to teach and assign tests, course work and exams. One said my hard work was supposed to be shown in the papers, not in bed. One of them called me a bad performer and a slut.
Feeling lost, Sharifah narrated everything to her friends. They were also surprised to know that she had slept with men for marks. She said they all laughed and called her names. Her friends had let me down. They said it was a test that I failed and I wondered why they would do that to me.
“They claimed to be disappointed in me yet I came out of the entire situation as a loser after everything I went through. I slept with men for marks and I didn’t get them, I realised I had spent my precious time with b*tches,” she said
